Philosophical Dictionary

It is the most famous formula in philosophy class, and Hegel never used it for his own method. We trace thesis, antithesis, synthesis back to Kant, Fichte and a forgotten popularizer, then show how Hegel’s dialectic actually works, from being and nothing to freedom and love. So why does the wrong version stick?

In the Aristotle and Plato meme, Plato hands his student a dish labelled “a fairly congruent theory of metaphysics” and Aristotle flings it across the room. Behind the joke sit two rival answers about where reality lives, what courage is, who should rule and how to find anything out. Which of them did the meme miss?